‘Wings’ and Other Poetry by C. David Hay

Wings

Oh, to catch the winds of flight
And soar where eagles go,
To leave the woes of troubled souls
Behind me far below.
I’d listen to the song of birds
And sail in endless flight,
Then chase the sun through cloudy paths
And play with stars at night.

The boundless heavens for my home,
The breeze to lift me high,
To rise above my mortal bonds
And never have to die;
Knowing I had found the way
To trails where angels trod,
And when my wings could fly no more –
I’d take the hand of God.

Country Lane

Give me a road away from the crowd,
Away from the noise and the race
And let me wander the quiet trail
To a different time and place.

Where miles are measured in valleys,
And birches point the way
To somewhere we miss so dearly –
We call it yesterday.

All cares are soon forgotten
On the path of no intent;
The beauty of the countryside
Is surely heaven sent.

And when the journey’s over
The memories shall remain
Of daydream trips into the past
Found down a country lane.

C. David Hay is a retired dentist living in Indiana and Florida. He received his BS and Doctor of Dental surgery Degrees from Indiana University. He is the author of five books of poetry which are dedicated to his wife, Joy. He has been widely published nationally and abroad and his poetry has been read on the British Broadcasting Channel. He was the first American published in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta in Russia. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry and is the recipient of the Ordo Honoris Award from Kappa Delta Rho.

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9 Responses

At first when I started to read “Wings” I felt like it was something I had read before, as if a cliche or something, but you managed to take a seemingly common trope and do something original and beautiful with it.

That’s what poets do.

There is a soulful and tender touch to both these poems. I’d be interested to read more of your stuff. Feel free to submit something at thechainedmusepoetry@gmail.com. Along with a few others, I contribute and edit The Chained Muse.com.

We recently published “Awakening” by Daniel Leach, a poem I think will be very much to your taste:

I don’t believe I’ve seen Mr Hay on this site, but these are very fine pieces of poetry: there is a simple nobility in the themes, and an easy, lilting technique in his prosody rarely encountered. Well done, Mr Hay!

Mr. Hay, Hello! I like both poems very much. I don’t think any changes are “necessary.” However, if I were to edit the poems, I would make one change to the first and three changes to the second. I would change “song of birds” to “songs of birds,” since different birds have different songs. Because “away” is used twice in the first two lines of the second poem, I would change the first line to read: “Give me a road far from the crowd,” Also, I would make sure that lines 5 and 7 of this poem have the exact same meter, simply because I think it would sound better. Finally, I would move “on” from the start of line 10 to the end of line 9, because it would give you a tidy quatrain consisting of 4-3-4-3 iambs. Just my 2¢.

Bruce, I suspected that Mr. Hay previously had poems on SCP, because his bio below today’s poems sounded familiar when I read it. I did a search on the phrase “Society of Classical Poets and C. David Hay” and was able to see the poems that he had published on SCP in 2016 and 2018.

Lovely poems, Mr. Hay, that convey in poignant and rapturous language a similar theme– the human longing for transcendence– whether that be by “taking wing” into sublime realms, or by following sylvan trails into places distant and long ago. The poem “Country Lane” captures perfectly the feeling that has often come to me when, driving through beautiful countryside, I spot a winding trail that disappears into a wood, or over a hill.